Dr. Rajan Mahtani is a noted businessman and philanthropist in Zambia. Being a renowned businessman in a corruption-ridden country such as Zambia comes with significant challenges. A part of this challenge is resisting the urge to engage in unethical and corrupt practices which Dr. Rajan Mahtani has been achieving diligently. However, even the clean image was not able to convince justice Nkonde from the Lusaka High Court that Dr. Rajan Mahtani and his evidences prove his to be the majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement factory.
Unethical practices are not new to the Ventriglia family who first made the claim against the majority shareholding ownership by Dr. Mahtani. This claim was made despite Dr. Mahtani receiving ownership of the factory via an authentic and original shareholding agreement. The vast weakness within the Zambian legal system was found when the Lusaka High Court dragged the case for more than a decade and despite this, announced Ventriglias as the only shareholders of the Portland Cement Zambia without them having any evidence whatsoever. Dr. Rajan Mahtani then took the right path and approached the higher Court of Appeal. The judge at the higher Court of Appeal was justice Mwinde who announced his verdict in quick time within nine months. On 31st January 2019, justice Mwinde reversed the decision from the Lusaka High Court and announced Dr. Rajan Mahtani as the majority shareholder as well as legal owner of the Portland Cement Zambia factory.
After the bizarre appeal by the Ventriglia family against the higher Court of Appeal’s decision, the Supreme Court established a bench for evaluation. According to this evaluation, the Ventriglia family did not comply with critical legal requirement of submitting claims against previous court decisions, Furthermore, the claim by the Ventriglia family was controversial and did not hold any ground. Based on all these aspects, the Supreme Court decided to reject the claim by the Ventriglia family.